Google Earth Sky

In the video above, Sally Ride, helps teach us how to use Google Earth as a star gazing program.  Instead of a program like Stellarium, Google Earth provides a way to actually zoom in on the galaxies around us.  The vantage point of Google Earth Sky is not on Earth.  Instead, the camera is located at a very distant point outside of our galaxy.  As of right now, the program does not allow for zooming in on things as small as planets or stars, but it does have markers at all of the various points of interest in our universe.  I wouldn’t say this is the best program for people interested in positions of constellations and planets in our night sky, but it gives a reference to where in the Milky Way all of the stars that make up those constellations are located.  It is strange to think that a program like this exists with markers on all of the points in our galaxy, when we have never and probably never will see the views of Google Earth Sky in real life because that would require us to travel lightyears into space and out of the galaxy we call home.

Sources:

Google Earth

Google Earth Website

Lightspeed Activate!

Distance light has to travel from the Sun to Earth

The speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second.  Nothing that we know of travels faster than light, and that’s a good thing because everything we see depends on light traveling from the object to our eyes.  Because light has to travel to our eyes, we always see things as they appeared in the past.  When looking at very close objects, the “past” that we see is only nanoseconds away from the present so it does not affect our ability to comprehend what is going on around us.  However, once you start looking at things very far away, that “past” that we see becomes a very real thing.  A lightyear is the distance traveled by light in the span of one year.  This means that if something is 45 lightyears away, the image of it that we see is actually what it looked like 45 years ago.   The light coming from this very distant object travels through space for 45 years until it reaches us.

Our Sun is only 4.5 billions years old.  This means that anything further than 4.5 billion lightyears away will have never even had a glimpse of our solar system.  It takes about 8 minutes for light from the sun to reach Earth.  If the sun were to explode, we would not even know it until 8 minutes after it happened.  Pretty crazy stuff if you ask me.

Sources:

Curious About Astronomy

Wikipedia

First Post!

By me.

A picture of my family on the day I was dropped off at Vanderbilt last year in front of the dorm where I am now an RA.